Applications in today's computing environment enable users to perform more tasks than ever before. To effectively perform a task with a given application, it is often desirable to access and use data that are generated and managed by other applications. Enabling one application to pick data handled by another application is typically not an easy undertaking. Generally, the picker component is tightly bound to the data source's application programming interface (API) and the user interface of the component is tailored to the type of data being picked. This tight binding presents a problem in dynamic applications, such as portal applications, where users want to connect to new data sources and pick new data types without writing code.
An effective solution for providing the ability for picking data from disparate data sources without undue complexity continues to elude those skilled in the art.